Everyone else has written about swine flu this week. I feel a reluctance to do so, really because we're at the eye of the storm here in Monklands and there's actually very little indication that there's much going on. Half of Monklands hospital has been cordoned off, there are taxi drivers going round with face masks and Dettol sprays and the local papers for once have had some decent news; it's not every day that a potential pandemic comes to your front door. But apart from that, we are not in the grip of fear. We are not panicking. Maybe we're just a little slow, but it all seems rather unreal.
My head tells me that the government are right to prepare. Since the introduction of xenotransplantation, (using animal parts for transplant in humans), there has been a debate about whether we will become more susceptible to animal disease. It was also part of the debate of the hybrid embryo bill, where scientists would be deriving stem cell lines from animal/human hybrids. But at the moment, there is a grey calm hanging over everything and Monklands is taking its place in the media sun with a phlegmatic shrug.
I just hope this post does not turn out to be like the postcard a Russian sent his relatives in Britain in October 1917;
'There's been some trouble in the streets, but there's nothing to worry about.'
Indeed.
Oops, I just sneezed...
